“I thought he had dropped my lady,” whispered Una.
“Well, you know, they had some intercourse when the amethysts—Ah! talk of hating, I should like to throw them into the sea—when they were got back. It would look very odd if he cut us. And as for you, darling, you are so different now—like another person.”
Una turned round and looked up into her sister’s face.
“Am I so changed?” she said.
“Why, yes, no one would know you for the same silly little girl,” said Amethyst, jestingly, but she felt, as she spoke, that her words gave a pang. “Change is best for us both,” she said steadily, with a certain sombre look in the eyes that were bent on Una’s.
Una was silent. Changed in a sense she was, for two years before she would have sobbed herself into hysterics, if half the same weight of emotion had been stirring in her breast. Now she lay still, enduring a knowledge of herself that never ought to have come to her seventeen years. The anguish that had come upon her might be shame and loathing, but it filled her soul. The face might be hateful that had once been adorable, but it blotted every other out. She had thought herself possessed by a new spirit, a holy spirit of love and peace, and behold the old possession had driven the new one away. There was a Face to which she had learned to turn, a Love she was beginning to know, and now—and now.
She pressed her hand on her heart, and was silent. Instinctively she felt that even Amethyst would not understand. With an effort to turn to a trouble that could be spoken of, she said—
“And Sylvester Riddell—I am ashamed to see him.”
“Sylvester Riddell knows nothing about you, darling,” said Amethyst.
“Amethyst, does seeing him make you—feel?”